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RobotToday Weekly

RobotToday Weekly November 9–13, 2026

Jensen Huang resigns as NVIDIA CEO, Agile Robots raises $500 million at an $8.5 billion valuation, GXO signs for up to 1,000 Apptronik Apollo humanoids, and Gemini Robotics 2.5 hits 96% at Mercedes-Benz.

RobotToday Reporter Nov 14, 2026 2 Mins read

SUMMARY

NVIDIA, whose chips and simulation software sit beneath much of the robotics industry, lost its founder: Jensen Huang resigned and CFO Colette Kress became interim CEO. Humanoid capital and commitments kept arriving regardless. Agile Robots raised $500 million at an $8.5 billion valuation, GXO signed a letter of intent for up to 1,000 Apptronik Apollo robots, and Google DeepMind reported 96% success on live Mercedes-Benz lines. Path Robotics and UFORCE raised $1 billion between them.

MARKET & FINANCIALS

Nov 13 — MetaX and UBTech-backed robotics chip startup Xilect raises RMB 500 million

The angel round funds a system-on-chip combining perception, decision-making and motion control on the robot. A partner development platform is planned for 2027, the first chip for 2028. | TechNode

Nov 12 — UFORCE raises $700M at $6 billion valuation from Leading Tech and Sovereign Wealth Funds to scale combat-proven defence systems for Ukraine and Allied Nations

Valor Equity Partners and the UK National Wealth Fund co-led the Series A. The London-headquartered, Ukraine-founded company builds uncrewed sea, land and air platforms and their command software. | UFORCE

Nov 12 — High-Speed Aircraft Startup Hermeus Joins Forces With Northrop Grumman

Northrop Grumman will integrate electronic warfare systems, sensors and autonomy packages onto next-generation Hermeus uncrewed aircraft aimed at high-supersonic flight for the US military. | The War Zone

Nov 12 — Robot Density Highest in South Korea, Singapore and Germany

IFR's World Robotics 2026 puts South Korea at 1,066 robots per 10,000 manufacturing workers, ahead of Singapore and Germany. The global average reached 152; China ranks 19th. | International Federation of Robotics

Nov 11 — ACSL and Unmanned Safety Institute Launch SOTEN Drone Training and Certification Program

ACSL, Inc. reports orders up more than 400% in the first half of 2026. Courses on the Japanese maker's SOTEN drone open in late November or early December. | DRONELIFE

Nov 10 — Path Robotics Announces $300 Million Series E Financing at $2.45 Billion Valuation to Scale Physical AI for Manufacturing

Georgian led the round; the valuation is post-money. Path says annual recurring revenue grew 17-fold in 18 months and will expand beyond welding into other manufacturing tasks. | Path Robotics

Nov 10 — Amazon's Prime Air secures the world's first SAIL 4 approval from the UK Civil Aviation Authority

The authorisation lets MK30 drones serve more densely populated parts of Darlington, extending under-two-hour delivery to thousands more customers. | Amazon

Nov 10 — Matternet and Swisslog Healthcare team up to bring drone delivery to hospitals

The partnership links Matternet drones to TransLogic transport systems, installed in more than 2,300 North American hospitals, to move medications and lab samples between facilities. | DroneDJ

Nov 9 — FAA Grants First Authorization for BVLOS Drone Operations Over Gulf

Skyways will fly its autonomous V2 aircraft from Shell's Gibson, Louisiana, facility to an offshore platform, inspecting a pipeline on the way. Approval came under Section 927. | DRONELIFE

Nov 9 — LUCAS Drones To Be Built In Containerized Robotic Micro Factories Designed To Be Forward Deployed

Machina received a $9 million, 18-month award to prove its RoboCraftsman system can build LUCAS airframes at deployed locations. A decision on scale production comes later. | The War Zone

PRODUCT LAUNCHES & BREAKTHROUGHS

Nov 13 — Gallop: ASUS’s new humanoid robot learns to pack tiny motherboard parts in factory

Gallop is packing 15 motherboard accessories at an ASUS group factory, targeting 99.5% success within 20 seconds. Customer pilots are planned for 2027, availability for late 2028. | Interesting Engineering

Nov 13 — Chinese hotel robot handles laundry from collection to delivery in just 18.6 seconds

ACE Robotics' Mundo world model builds digital twins from photographs; a cloud planner and on-robot skills run the workflow. The 18.6-second figure is the company's own. | Interesting Engineering

Nov 12 — Melexis Gives Humanoid Robots Sense of Touch with Its First Tactile Fingertip Module

The MLX90901 measures normal and shear force in three dimensions. It is Melexis' first mechatronic module, built on its Tactaxis sensing technology. | RoboticsTomorrow

Nov 11 — Praxis-1 Is Now Available

The 27-billion-parameter world action model ships with open weights under Apache 2.0. Runway reports 46.2% success on NVIDIA's RoboLab-120 leaderboard. | Runway

Nov 11 — Can AI agents program industrial robots without training data? Berkeley says yes

UC Berkeley and NVIDIA released RoboSimStudio, open-source tooling in which teams of AI coding agents write, simulate and refine readable robot programs. | The Robot Report

Nov 11 — Serve Robotics opens robot delivery network for others to build on

A public API and sandbox let developers and businesses summon Serve's sidewalk delivery robots programmatically through the new AV Delivery Developer Portal. | The Robot Report

Nov 10 — Ring announces Ring Robotics, ushering in a new era of security

Drone Cam, an indoor flying camera, ships in the US on January 27, 2027 at $249.99. The Rover Cam business patrol robot ships December 16 at $999.99. | Amazon

Nov 10 — Ant Group’s Robbyant open-sources tactile AI model for robot hands

LingBot-Touch was trained on nearly 5,000 hours of recordings from three tactile sensor types and evaluated on 26 real-world tasks with two robotic hands. | TechNode

Nov 9 — Practice Makes Precise: At CoRL, NVIDIA and Partners Reveal How Robots Rehearse Delicate Work in Simulation

GR00T 2 averaged 71% success across 50 tasks from one demonstration each, and 95% from five, by NVIDIA's own evaluation. Isaac Lab 3.0 adds the Newton solver. | NVIDIA

Nov 9 — Boston Dynamics adds wheels to Atlas humanoid to test whole-body control

A research testbed, not a product: a reinforcement-learning policy trained in simulation lets Atlas roll, pirouette and switch between wheeled and legged motion. | The Robot Report

Nov 9 — AI-assisted learning platform helps robots reason beyond literal commands

FLEX, from MIT and New York University researchers, lets a robot generalise from conversational instructions to improve its motion planning rather than follow them only literally. | MIT News

Nov 9 — Teradyne Introduces Omnyx Edge, Inline Board Test for Physical and Edge AI

The platform extends the Omnyx family from data centres to inline testing of compute, sensing and motion boards for robots, vehicles and edge devices. | Teradyne

Nov 9 — Fishing Trawler Adapted Into Arctic Hunter Drone Ship Aims To Scour For Russian Submarines

Kongsberg Maritime's fully uncrewed Arctic Hunter, based on a fishing-vessel design, targets the Royal Navy's Type 92 anti-submarine requirement in the North Atlantic and Arctic. | The War Zone

Nov 9 — New wheeled humanoid robot learns factory jobs in a month, reports 95% success rate

Swiss startup Embodied AI's two-armed AIR uses tendon-driven arms to work without a safety cage. The 95% figure is its own average across paid pilots. | Interesting Engineering

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Written by

RobotToday Reporter - Editor

RobotToday Reporter is the editorial desk byline used for short news updates, event announcements, and industry briefings produced by the RobotToday editorial team. These articles are compiled and reviewed internally by the newsroom.